Book Review: The Dead Take the A Train by Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey

Cool cover art, eh?

The Big Apple with Big Worms

New York City is the setting for cosmic horror and a capitalist satire where characters are either worshiping or exorcizing demons and monsters for profit.

The plot is divided between two characters. First there's Julie, a tough and gritty freelance demon hunter who needs quick cash and is in love with her best friend. Then there is her ex, Tyler. He’s an upwardly mobile prick who works for a supernaturally evil law firm. He’s always strategizing how to get ahead or at least not die on the job.

The two plot lines blend together pretty well, with each action that Julie or Tyler take impacting the other one.

Tyler’s employer, Thorne and Dirk, is a Wolfram & Hart clone from the old Angel television show. Just replace “Upper Management” with “Senior Partners.”

I have to admit, I expected The Dead Take the A-Train to be something like Clive Barker’s “Midnight Meat Train.” (Now there’s a writer who knows how to use gore to good effect.) But I can’t fault Kadrey and Khaw for my expectations.

Speaking of gore, for all the parasitic worms and body horror in Dead Take the A-Train, it comes off cartoonish, no real chills or threat.

A good example is the bit with when Julie takes her intern to an exorcism. After battling a demon in a corporate office, She stuffs brand new organs from a suitcase back into her mostly dead intern—with no regard to how they should be placed. Then she sews him up with "Angel Thread" and he wakes up later with no visible scarring. It was kind of funny. Maybe that was the intention.

Speaking of that, how does the "Angel Thread" allow her to do this? The authors never tell us how the supernatural stuff works in this version of New York. There’s no world-building, no rules or limits for Julie’s magic skills. I don’t want info-dumping, but a little backstory once in a while goes a long way.

It is a fun book but superficial and light. There’s little character development and no one get any deeper than one-line descriptions:

Julie: Rolling ball of chaos with badass powers.

Tyler: Julie’s manipulative bastard ex-boyfriend.

Sara: Julie’s warm-hearted, perfect best friend.

Dan: Sara’s abusive ex-boyfriend.

St. Joan: Julie’s Hollywood-glamorous and generous landlady.

Dead Air: Helpful knockoff of a William Gibson-esque character.

Billy, the book dealer, is the most intriguing character, engaging in the capitalist activity of selling occult books for reasons that have nothing to do with making money. I’d read more about him.

This could have been good, a new take on Urban Fantasy in the Big Apple (with big worms!) but it needed to be fleshed out. It feels like an outline for a movie or television show.

Originally reviewed for GoodReads, July 24, 2024